Presently, an airbag control unit may include so-called standard PSI5 interfaces and an independent hardware path. The PSI5 interfaces are used to read in the external crash sensors of the airbag system. The sensor values are transmitted via the interface. If the sensor values exceed the thresholds predefined in the independent hardware path, this value is part of the release to trigger the squids. The second part of the release is formed from sensor signals of other crash sensors after processing in the crash algorithm. This part of the release is issued via an SPI transmission signal via the microcontroller in the airbag system.